Baby-Boomers Are Under Attack In This New Book

It seems as though targeting the Millennial generation is a fairly common practice these days. They are often labelled the "Me Generation" because they are thought of as self-absorbed and narcissistic.

One book however, is blaming those tendencies on the generation that raised them. Bruce Cannon Gibney has written a book called A Generation Of Sociopaths which is all about the baby boomer's affect on America.

Gibney suggests a controversial hypothesis that a large subset of the white, middle-class boomers are sociopathic. He has collected data which suggests that boomers tend to have higher levels of antisocial traits,including a lack of empathy, disregard for others, egotism and impulse control issues than other generations.

When asked about his theories Gibney cites the fact that "we have an enormous amount of data about the boomer mainstream, and it matches up surprisingly well with the description of antisocial personality disorder."

His focus is on the white, middle-class boomers because he believes they were raised in a homogeneous way. He says that "they were the first generation in the U.S. to be raised permissively. These people have high self-esteem, but they tend to be more rebellious and messy, both in the literal sense and in their approach to their own affairs."

He connects this to television, saying that "they were also the first generation to be raised with television, and there really weren't parental reservations about screen time. The literature on TV and cognitive behavioral development is almost universally negative.

He explains that boomers "came of age in a time of fairly effortless prosperity, and real effort. So they really assume that things are going to work out, no matter what."

Gibney says that the boomer generations has "much greater expectations about what society can do for you, and what it owes you."

The book goes into great detail explaining his theory on the baby boomers and how they impacted America with their views. If you are interested in learning more, you can find the book here.

What do you think? Is this a fair assessment or is it disrespectful to consider an entire generation of people as one?